A rift now separates the United States and the world -- not just a diplomatic gap, but a perception gap. One sign of the sundering is the discrepancy in how journalists here and abroad have treated some recent stories. Repeatedly, unflattering aspects of America's foreign policy have gotten big play overseas while receiving fleeting comment or shrugs at home.Consider some examples.

On March 4, the New York Times reported that the Army was probing whether two Afghan detainees who died in December were victims of fatally abusive treatment by American soldiers; a military pathologist had officially characterized the deaths as homicides. Other domestic newspapers picked up the story, reporting the facts in measured terms and noting human rights groups' concerns. Yet the deaths didn't stimulate public outrage, op-ed pieces or cable news screamfests.

Newspapers abroad, in contrast, responded with indignation. While U.S. papers used the Army investigation as the news hook, suggesting that responsible officials were cracking down on anomalous behavior, foreign journals implied that American brutality was not out of the ordinary. "U.S. Prisoners Beaten to Death," read a headline in Melbourne. The lead paragraph of the Independent of London's account saidthat the "kill[ings]" were "reviving concerns that the U.S. is resorting to torture in its treatment of Taliban fighters and suspected [al Qaeda] operatives."

Even more stark was the divergence in how British and American papers covered news of U.S. spying at the United Nations. In early March, the Observer, a London paper, uncovered a National Security Agency memo describing "a surge" in U.S. surveillance, including the interception of phone calls and e-mails at home and at work, of Security Council delegations to uncover information that might help drum up support for a resolution on Iraq. "Revealed: U.S. dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war," said a headline on the Observer's Web site. Follow-up pieces underscored the unsavory nature of such skulduggery, including a quote from Daniel Ellsberg that the disclosure was "potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers," the secret Vietnam War documents which he had leaked in 1971.

Back in the United States, journalists didn't ignore the story, but they steered clear of phrases such as "dirty tricks." Headlines soberly stated that "some say it's nothing to get worked up about" (the Los Angeles Times) or "No Shock to [the] U.N." (The Washington Post). Articles reminded readers that the United States has been secretly monitoring other countries' U.N. missions since the body's inception. Most commentators and kitchen-table kibitzers greeted the news with a yawn.

Finally, there's the case of the forged documents. In case you missed it, last week Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that the documents provided by the United States and Britain showing that Iraq bought uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001 were, as he diplomatically phrased it, "not authentic." Irate cries overseas that U.S. and British leaders were doctoring evidence to make their case for war barely resonated here, where most journalists and readers accepted official claims that it was an innocent mistake.

What are we to make of these disparate takes on the same events? A crude interpretation would be that publishers, editors and reporters everywhere are cynically distorting the news. If you're hostile to the Bush administration's pro-war position, you might believe that U.S. journalists have downplayed these blockbuster stories because they fear they'll either derail the war juggernaut or alienate readers, advertisers and sources. Conversely, if you favor the Bush administration's approach, you're more likely to find the international press guilty of cynically magnifying molehill stories into mountainous ones either to pander to trendy anti-Americanism or to succor antiwar efforts.

But the view that mainstream journalists or publishers rate the newsworthiness of stories by economic or ideological considerations doesn't jibe with reality. Generally only people without journalism experience adhere to this view. Journalists value a good scoop, regardless of whose ox is gored. Publishers prize stories that bring prestige to their papers.

Yet the news media do have biases. An item that reinforces an existing narrative gets more play than one that seems anomalous. And pack journalism -- the tendency to cover what everyone else is covering -- is an occupational hazard. These professional blinders can impair the judgment of journalists rating a story's significance.

Distortion occurs at a deeper level, too. Journalists are beholden not only to the norms of their profession but also to the premises to which almost everyone in a given culture subconsciously subscribes. Ideology and culture do shape the news, though not in the crude way posited by left- and right-wing media watchdog groups. Those who assess what's newsworthy -- whether as members of the media or observers of it -- don't question bedrock beliefs that undergird their society's understanding of the world. That's why they're called blind spots.

In the case of these recent stories, most American journalists -- and most citizens -- are operating in an environment that takes an essentially benign view of our leaders. Though various American critics view the Bush administration as misguided, incompetent or overly hungry for war, few seriously entertain the claim that it's bent on conquest for self-aggrandizing or venal reasons. The natural inclination (even for reporters who are liberal or antiwar) is to infer that the beating deaths of prisoners, the spying at the U.N. and the forgeries represent not a pattern of American villainy but exceptional cases of error. The stories are reported, but relegated to inside pages, without the high-voltage language of exposés, and contextualized to fend off charges of sensationalism.

In the last year, much of the rest of the world has reached a radically different view of American motives. The United States' position as sole superpower, combined with its high-handed diplomacy since the end of the Afghan war, has eroded faith in American benevolence. Public opinion abroad readily accepts intimations of willful U.S. aggression and even depravity; witness the currency among the French and Italians of conspiracy theories holding that the administration engineered the horrors of Sept. 11.

The gulf between the dominant American orientation and that of other nations is exacerbated by differences in our journalistic practices. Since the mid-century demise of the publishing titans who stamped their views on every page of their journals, big-league U.S. newspapers have clung to such lodestar values as balance, fairness and objectivity. Despite a growing role for "analysis" pieces, the mainstream press still prides itself on reporting the news straight and confining opinion to the editorial pages. The European press, in contrast, is comfortable with partisanship. Articles you read in the left-wing Guardian, if published stateside, would more likely appear in the Nation than in the Boston Globe; the right-wing Spectator's fare resembles National Review's coverage more than USA Today's.

As a result, American journalists tend to be more squeamish than their European counterparts about setting the news agenda. If the leading political players don't get worked up about a would-be scandal, the press (usually) balks at arrogating that role to itself. European papers, on the other hand, allow themselves more freedom in deciding what's news, independent of official say-so.

Yet we should be cautious about ascribing differing American and foreign assessments of news stories to national traits or institutions. After all, not long ago the U.S. media would have treated these recent episodes as huge scandals -- the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers or My Lai or the 18½-minute gap in Richard Nixon's Watergate tapes.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a simmering American skepticism about the motives and morality of our leaders boiled over. Several long-term trends coalesced into a climate of suspicion -- and at times paranoia -- that moved rapidly from the left and right margins of society into the mainstream. The 1960s brought a rebellion against authority. Vietnam, Watergate and other episodes revealed that high officials routinely lied, abused power and betrayed the public trust. The exposure of secret operations by the Army, FBI and CIA to spy on law-abiding citizens nourished fears that the government was not the people's protector but their enemy. The Church Committee, the Senate panel that in 1975 disclosed sordid CIA activities, marked the high (or low) point of the culture of suspicion.

And then the mood of active distrust began to subside. It was as if Americans, having faced the darkest elements of their system, couldn't bear to see any more. The post-Vietnam years witnessed a backlash against what was seen as an excess of self-criticism. Old-fashioned values of family, patriotism, hierarchy and duty regained cachet.

To be sure, a robust strain of cynicism toward officials and their motives endured. But the disparaging of social policymaking in the Reagan era and the eye-rolling at presidential peccadilloes in the Clinton era were far cries from the cynicism of the Nixon years. Indeed, when it came to America's role on the world stage, the 1980s were a time of jingoism re-ascendant and fading self-doubt.

The trauma of Sept. 11 marked another turning point. Surging with patriotism, citizens and journalists granted their leaders unwonted latitude in fashioning a response to the terrorists. Although most things returned more or less to normal after six months -- people began traveling again, Congress started bickering again, Bush called for tax cuts again -- the new readiness to defer to the government on national security matters remained. Ever since, the public, including the press, has ascribed to the president a degree of goodwill unprecedented in the post-1960s era.

Overseas, however, events since Sept. 11 have led people in the opposite direction. Suspicion of U.S. motives has escalated; willingness to cut the Bush administration some slack has plunged. Where Americans' trust in their leaders seems distressingly high, as if the Nixon years have been forgotten, foreigners' faith in us is troublingly low. In that divide lie the roots of our irreconcilable takes on the news, and our contrary fears for the future.

David Greenberg, a visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a historian and a columnist for Slate. His book "Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image" will be published this fall.